After Five Century, The Philippines is Chess Country (Part 4)

he Philippines first participation in a FIDE event was in 1956 when Campo led a 4-man team to the Moscow Olympiad together with Glicerio Badilles, Carlos Benitez and Rodolfo Tan Cardoso.

A series if international stints followed and I 1957, the Philippines hosted the first Asian Zonal Tournament in Baguio City, won by Cardoso. Earlier that year, Cardoso was conferred the International master by the FIDE Congress in Vienna. In 1958, he led the Philippine team to the Munich Olympiad.

The Philippines started making its mark in the world chess map when Cardoso landed 5th in the World Junior Championship followed by Renato Naranja’s 9th place finish in that event two years later.

Campomanes again played top board for the Philippines in the 1960 Leipzig Olympiad together with Naranja, Ruben Reyes, Edgar de Castro and Segundino Avecilla. Campomanes, Naranja, Borja, Badilles, De Castro and Rosendo balinas Jr. composed the Philippine Team to the Tel-Aviv Olympiad in 1964, after missing the 1962Olympiad.

It was touch and go many times with players getting their wherewithal only at the last minute. There was even a time when the team of Campomanes, Naranja, de Castro and Balinas found themselves stranded in the 1966 Havana Olympiad.

A Golden era began in 1967 when the Manila Electric Company gave impetus to Philippine chess by inviting such notable grandmasters as Bobby Fischer in 1967, Svetozar Gligoric of Yugoslavia in 1968 and Rumanian Florin Georghiu in 1969.

The exposure to grandmasters must have been a principal factor for the Philippine Team’s fine performance in the 1968 Lugano Olympiad when it landed in the Final Group A.

In 1969, Naranja earned his International Master title by capturing the Asian Zonal title in Singapore.

After years of uphill battle for recognition, chess was finally catching fire in the country. In 1969, the Philippines sent a team to Dresden Student team championship. In 1970, the country joined the Siegen Olympiad.

The year 1971 saw ascent of a new star, Eugene Torre. The Filipino placed fourth in the world junior championship in Athens, nearly beating the eventual winner Anatoly Karpov who escaped with a draw. Karpov was later to state that this game with Torre was the turning point of his career.

Torre went on to win the 1972 Asian Zonal in Hong Kong. The Filipinos have reigned in the region since.

The first Philippine International chess tournament in 1973 marked the true take-off of Philippine chess. President Ferdinand E. Marcos and then world champion Bobby Fischer opened the event at the Araneta coliseum before a crowd of 25,000. The full 5 hours of each round was covered by national television.

A decade of Marlboro International tournaments followed. All FIDE world champions, with the exception of GM Mikhail Botnivik, have since visited our shores. The annual event parading top ranked grandmaster inspired the youth to follow their example.

A chess developing country needs a hero for others to look up to and in 1974, Torre firmly established himself as THE Filipino chess hero when he became the first Asian Grandmaster at the Olympiad in Nice, France.

More firsts followed that year. The 1974 World Junior Championship, the first world event to be staged in Asia, was held in Manila. Then the Philippines won the first Asian Team Championship held in Penang, Malaysia, and the Tun Abdul Razak Challenge Cup in successive title defenses.

In 1975, we conquered…

(To be continued)